A few nights ago, Jen and I stumbled upon a show that intrigued us.

As homeowners, we like watching shows like Trading Spaces where we can see how people have redesigned and remodeled their homes.

The show we stumbled upon was called Extreme Makeover: Home Edition. The premise of the show is to take a deserving family and completely makeover their whole house in just seven days.

While the family is sent on a seven day vacation that they could probably never afford themselves, a team of designers, carpenters and construction workers come in, completely gut the house almost down to the frame and then they rebuild it, making it more usable and more up to date than it was before.

In the process of redesigning and rebuilding a house in just seven days, the camera gives the viewer a glimpse into the crazy process of overseeing a project of such magnitude.

You see the miscommunication that takes place between co-workers, leading to unresolved conflict. You see glimpses of selfishness as people lobby for their ideas over the ideas of others.

You see how the team gets stressed out when it’s coming down to the wire and things aren’t coming together smoothly.

You see the panic when there is only 24 hours left but 48 hours of work to do.

You also see the end product and the look of total satisfaction as the family comes home to see their dream home. It’s interesting to hear the workers admit that their differences and bickering were petty compared to the reward of seeing a deserving family’s crying tears of gratitude for the amazing gift that has been given to them.

I started to think about how our job is a lot like “Extreme Makeover”. It’s an impossible job that we’re trying to do. What is it we’re trying to do? Well in the words of Bob Francis (a national director with Campus Crusade), we’re “only trying to change a person’s whole reason for existence!”

We’re trying to change people’s reason for living. We’re trying to give them a spiritual makeover. We have several staff and many students who are involved in the makeover process here at UC Davis. We all have different ideas and plans about how to create the movement. We have misunderstandings, there is relational conflict and we can sometimes act selfishly.

In the end though, these things are petty compared to the changed lives of the students who are being influenced.

One of the workers on the show shared how physically exhausting it is because of the time demands of trying to completely rebuild and redesign a house in just seven days.

Yet with a tear in his eye, he said he would do it all again the next day, just to see the impact they had on this one family.

That’s exactly how we feel. Our work is demanding and emotionally exhausting. Sometimes we wonder if it’s really worth it. But when we see one’s person whose life is changed because of our labor, it makes it all worth it.

Thank you so much for co-laboring with us as we seek to give students on campus an extreme makeover!

Jacob (left) and Joshua will be 3 years old on May 14th. They both love fire trucks and bulldozers and tow trucks, along with their Thomas the Train set. Joshua likes peanut butter and ketchup, but Jacob always makes it a point to let us know he doesn’t like ketchup or peanut butter.

Dave is still taking seminary classes, one at a time, while Jen maintains a busy schedule taking care of the boys while training 4 women and leading a Bible study for the leadership women.